Dead Media Beat: wwwtxt

“In 1995, commercialization, a swelling population, and the multimedia revolution began to shape Web 1.0 and the modern Internet. 1988–94 represent the final years of a much smaller, non-commercial, and text-dominated Internet.

“The users of this era were not only programmers, physicists, and university residents—they were also tinkerers, early-adopters, whiz kids, and nerds. Their conversations and documents—valiantly preserved by digital archivists—are fractured across numerous services, increasingly offline-only, and incredibly voluminous (100GB+).

“wwwtxt digs deep and resurrects the voices of these digital pioneers as unedited*, compelling, and insightful 140-character excerpts.

“to shed light on a moment of interest to many but experienced by relatively few
“to revisit a place that I knew well in my youth with an analytical mind
“to draw parallels between the Internet of the past and today
“to trace and document the origins of net culture